Black people represented the largest increase in traffic deaths among all racial groups last year, when Americans drove less due to the pandemic, NBC News reported.
The U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said an estimated 38,680 people overall died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2020 — the largest number of fatalities since 2007, NBC News reported.
The number of Black people who died in such crashes was up 23% from 2019, according to the administration’s report.
The Blaze said that NBC News suggesting Black people were disproportionately the victims of motor vehicle accidents revealed "inherent discrimination in traffic accidents."
Smart Growth America President Calvin Gladney told NBC News there were three major reasons Black people suffer more roadway injuries — infrastructure, design, and racism.
NBC News reported Gladney said that predominantly Black neighborhoods are less likely to have crosswalks, warning signs, and other safety mechanisms. He added that a 1950s federal effort to modernize the nation’s roadways resulted in highways going through communities of color.
"These fatalities have been going upward for a decade," Gladney told NBC News. "You go to Black and brown communities, you go to lower-income communities and you don’t see many sidewalks. You don’t see as many pedestrian crossings.
"The types of streets that go through Black and brown neighborhoods are like mini highways where the speed limit is 35 or 45. You see this disproportionately in Black and brown communities often because of race-based decisions of the past."
Gladney told NBC News that Black neighborhoods include poor roads and little access to public transportation due to the lack of infrastructure spending. He also cited a 2017 University of Nevada study that found drivers were less likely to slow down or stop for Black pedestrians than they were for white ones.
President Joe Biden's proposed $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, which includes efforts to make public transportation more accessible and improve road safety, are necessary, said Gladney, who added the situation is "fixable."
"The pandemic illuminated issues that people have been ignoring," Gladney added. "These are the same streets and the same roads that have always been there. If we have intentionality to get to racial equity and close the disparities, we actually can fix this."
The Blaze, however, said "the massive $2 trillion infrastructure bill, introduced this spring, has little to do with infrastructure. The bill, according to some critics, is basically the Green New Deal wrapped in more tolerable language."
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has said the bill will address the racism allegedly baked into American infrastructure, The Blaze reported.
"There is racism physically built into some of our highways, and that's why the jobs plan has specifically committed to reconnect some of the communities that were divided by these dollars," Buttigieg said in April.
Norman Garrick, a the University of Connecticut civil and environmental engineering professor, told NBC News the administration's numbers were not surprising.
"Black people tend to be overrepresented as walkers in this country," Garrick said, according to NBC News. "This is not by choice. In many cases, Black folks cannot afford motor vehicles.
"And people that walk in this country tend to experience a much, much higher rate of traffic fatality. We’re talking eight to 10 times more. It’s a perfect storm of a lot of horrible forces."
Black pedestrians were 82% more likely to be hit by drivers, according to a 2021 report from Smart Growth America, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group focused on urban development.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.